Refurbished Trench Town Police Station Handed Over

The newly refurbished Trench Town Police Station in Kingston, 10 service vehicles and equipment were handed over to the Ministry of National Security, at the station on March 19.
This was facilitated by the European Commission, through the Social and Economic Reform Programme (SERP III).
Minister of National Security, Derrick Smith, in his remarks, said the refurbishing of the (Trench Town) police station was “timely.”
“This really is a very worthy gift for the police officers who have to keep the lid on the situation here in Trench Town,” the Minister said.He pointed out that the vehicles would be allocated to the Safe Schools Programme, the Police Academy, and the Scene of Crime Unit.
Mr. Smith emphasized that the improvement of police stations would receive priority attention by the Ministry. “In our manifesto,” he said, “we committed ourselves toward a five-year programme to ensure that all the (police) stations islandwide are in a decent respectable position, so that our men and women working in these stations will not work (in) any degree of inconvenience.”
The Minister also noted that as part of the programme, a noted forensic scientist, Dr. Adrian Linacre, has been brought on board. He will be training crime scene officers to analyze bloodstain patterns.
“It has been a very fruitful relationship between Jamaica and the European Union (EU) and indeed the Ministry of National Security has continued to be a major beneficiary of that hospitality,” he said.Mr. Smith appealed to the officers to take care of the motor vehicles as they are very expensive to be replaced.
Meanwhile, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Baldwin Burey, who spoke on behalf of Commissioner of Police, Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin, said that the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) was going through a “reform and modernization programme.”
He also noted that the JCF was strengthening its community policing initiative, a programme where the police would work through the members of the community to solve community related security and social concerns.
Head of Delegation of the European Commission, Ambassador Marco Mazzocchi-Alemanni, who handed over the refurbished station, equipment and vehicles to the Minister, said that the EU “is by far the major development partner of Jamaica in financial terms.”
“What you see here at (the) Trench Town Police Station, is just the tip of the iceberg of a recent $60 million contribution to the Ministry of National Security, ranging from computers and vehicles, to student scholarships; from forensic training to the media campaign of getting guns off the streets,” he informed.
He said the EU would now focus on volatile communities through the Poverty Reduction Programme (PRP) of the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF). The PRP is a community development initiative geared at developing social, economic and security infrastructure, in order to improve the quality of life of Jamaicans.
The Above Rocks police station in St. Catherine, was also refurbished as part of the programme. Both stations were refurbished at a cost of $10 million.